[Editor’s note: The picture above is of Cynthia Farahat, who will be one of the honorees at the annual dinner. Below is a picture of Sarah Stern.]

FP: Sarah Stern, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Let’s begin with you sharing with us why you felt it necessary to launch another think tank in Washington. Tell us its purpose and what it does.

Stern: I founded EMET when I had been the Director of Governmental Relations with the American Jewish Congress, and the AJC leadership asked me to lobby for the Gaza withdrawal in 2005. I knew in the pit of my stomach, that this withdrawal was not going to work, and that Gaza was eventually going to become a base on which the Palestinians would launch missiles onto southern Israel. I wish I had been proven wrong, but I knew I was not going to let myself become a party to enabling that to happen.

I became involved in this sort of business, approximately twelve years earlier, shortly after the signing of the Oslo Accords. That is when three members of the Israeli embassy, under the reign of Yitzhak Shamir, had called me and told me that they had a sinking suspicion that Arafat was not going to live up to one iota of the Accords he has just signed, and that they were no longer in Washington, and needed someone here, to disseminate the truth about what he would be saying to his own people in his own language, and how it would differ from what he would be saying to the Western world in English. I told them it would be an honor and a privilege, and I did that pro bono for several years.

I then became the National Policy Coordinator or the ZOA, and then the Director of Governmental Affairs of the American Jewish Congress. It was the request from the AJC for me to lobby for the Gaza withdrawal, as well as a pivotal event in a major think tank in Washington, that people have grown to know of as, the “Jewish” think tank that were turning points in my career, and pushed me over the edge to establish my own shop in Washington.

It was then that this other thank tank brought in some “Tanzem” terrorists from the disputed territories, in the fall of 2005, and introduced them as the “pragmatic alternative to Arafat, the young, more practical generation. It was at that time that I publicly challenged these guests from Tanzem with) two questions. Their answers immediately exposed them for who they were, and all the pens in the room dropped. (The person who brought them in was a friend of mine, and he was furious at me for asking those questions).

I knew, at that moment, that no-one was getting out our people’s proud narrative in Washington, without it being obfuscated by moral relativism and political correctness. I decided that day that I had to open up a think tank and policy shop that clearly articulates the truth of our people’s proud narrative about our struggle to survive in the Middle East, and I knew immediately that I wanted to I call it “EMET”, an acronym for the Endowment for Middle East Truth. “EMET” means “truth” in Hebrew.

FP: Do you have a specific mission?

Stern: Yes Jamie, we see it as our mission to simply tell the un-doctored truth about Israel’s proud struggle to survive, and the radical Islamist’s war against Israel and the West. We find the courage to say the words that few in Washington manage to say, because they are so hindered by “political correctness” and moral ambiguity about the rightness of our cause. We write and publish articles and books, and speak on the radio and on television. We are constantly on Capitol Hill, in one-to-one meetings with members of Congress or their staffers, and we arrange for seminars, at least once a month, sometimes twice, when we bring in our “brain trust” of the brightest and the best experts from Israel and all around the world to share what the Jewish state is up against and how the United States, if possible, may be able to profit from its hard-earned wisdom.

We always place everything within the framework of what is actually good for American security interests, emphasizing how, in the minds of the radical Islamists, Israel is simply “The Minor Satan” and America is “The Great Satan,” and how anything that emboldens the radical Islamist against Israel also emboldens them against the United States. In that way, we can avoid the canard of bring more Catholic than the Pope, or more right wing then the democratically elected government of the state of Israel. We think outside of the box, and we examine if the premises of our foreign policy need to be re-evaluated. For example, goal post for the “land for peace” paradigm is “peace,” we examine whether or not since the signing of the Oslo Accords, we have gotten any closer or further away from that goal post. Or whether or not it is time to re-examine the premises that this paradigm has been predicated upon.

FP: Tell us about your book and what inspired you to write it.

Stern: When I was with the American Jewish Congress, I started to lobby for a piece of legislation to try to correct the deeply entrenched anti-Israeli and anti-American biases in most, if not all, of the Middle Eastern Studies Departments in universities across our nation. These departments are brought to us at the taxpayers’ expense through the National Defense Education Act, which is an earlier moniker for Title VI of the Higher Education Act. I felt that since the taxpayer was footing the bill for these departments, we might be able to find a legislative corrective, to try to have some sort of balance in the curriculum. It was very difficult because many professors’ groups felt that this would encroach on their” academic freedom”.

This is the first I'm hearing of Ms. Stern and her fine efforts. I applaud her along with you Dr. Glazov for bringing her to us. I look forward to reading her book and hope for much more exposure to her work her at FPM.

Marty

I'll certainly be ordering and reading her book. Her work is refreshingly courageous and accurate. It's especially gratifying to note that Ms. Stern is exposing the saudis for the cowardice and genocidal pathology. When several saudi princes visited ground zero of the 9/11 attack in New York a few years ago, a reporter observed that they were smiling and chortling over the deaths of thousands of innocent people. The saudis are war criminals, slave traders, sponsors of terrorism, and perfect examples of taqiyya as they pretend to be American allies while supporting imams who preach hatred and anti-semitism in American mosques. They are beyond despicable.

Ghostwriter

I hope our resident anti-semites like Nakba1948 and Shlobrain don't read this article. They'll come out of the woodwork to attack her.

KarshiKhanabad

Oh, nothing to fret about. Snackbar48 & his sidekick Schloim will sound like the brainfried idiots they are, as usual, saying more about their sorry selves than they ever possibly could say against their Jewish target.

Anyone who sets up a pro-Israel think tank inside the belly of the beast (Washington D.C., a once beautiful city but no more) has got courage by the mile. Wish them the best.